PICKET: Cain - DOJ is 'supposed to be about justice not politics'

Presidential primary candidate Herman Cain sees a Justice Department under a Cain administration would actually “put justice back into the role of the Department of Justice.” The recent Florida straw poll winner spoke with me on Saturday about his thoughts President Obama’s Justice Department and what he would like to see in a Justice Department if he were elected president.

“The department of justice should be not just an arm of the United States government and executive office it should represent the people. It’s supposed be about justice not about politics,” Mr. Cain said. “If you start with due course rights, that’s one of my guiding principles, I’m not going to ask an agency to do something that’s wrong. I’m never going to ask an agency to be bias.”

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Mr. Cain referenced DOJ’s 2010 decision to stick Arizona with a lawsuit as a result of Arizona’s immigration law. He criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for not “representing the true spirit of his job as attorney general.” :

“They were bias when they went after Arizona. That was uncalled for. You can list a whole list of things that raises a red flag about ‘what’s the motivation for doing that?’ And so my opinion of [holder] is that he is not representing the true spirit of his job as attorney general, because we can see many of the discretionary decisions that he’s making to determine how he does his job and how the DOJ does it’s job,” said Cain.

Since the Clinton administration, conservatives have seen how Democratic packed the Justice Department with both political and, more importantly, career staffers who have used their positions to shut out individuals from the Department who may have a hint of a Republican or conservative background. Former DOJ attorney Hans von Spakovsky wrote about the systemic problems relating to liberal ideology within the Justice Department in a 2009 Heritage Foundation piece.

Mr. Cain believes the current Department of Justice has been involved in number of shady issues that would need to be investigated by an independent counsel, but he asks, “Whose going to do it?” He explained, “I mean, they have so many firewalls in DC you would have to have the United States Congress to basically get involved in this sort of thing.”

“This administration has created so much questionable stuff, that they know it would take years for it to get sorted out. It is now apparent that is part of their strategy and so it would be nice to appoint an independent counsel-an independent commissioner…all that,” Mr. Cain said. “It’s just so counter-productive, but the best thing to do is to get this president out of there and his administration of there and we can put justice back into the role of the Department of Justice.”

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About the Author

Kerry Picket, a former Opinion Blogger/Editor of The Watercooler, was associate producer for the Media Research Center, a content producer for Robin Quivers of “The Howard Stern Show” on Sirius satellite radio and a production assistant and copy writer at MTV.